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I personally like making (and using) TUIs because: - They encourage developing simpler, information-dense, and keyboard-driven interfaces, which I tend to pref
by nimih 1mo ago
I personally like making (and using) TUIs because:
- They encourage developing simpler, information-dense, and keyboard-driven interfaces, which I tend to prefer in general.
- I find them more fun to write, and less aggravating to maintain and debug, than interfaces built with GUI toolkits.
- Most software I write for personal use is going to be run in both a Linux and Mac OS environment (and a lot of the time on a headless server to boot), and a TUI often has less fuss than other options (at least, IME).
- I think monospaced text in a terminal just looks cool.
- annapanna 1mo agoBut you can't really do information dense when you are limited to a fixed grid of monospaced character glyphs. Variable width fonts are much more information dense for example.
- croon 1mo agoI prefer TUIs personally, but I can't see myself use maps, or visual image editing in a TUI for example, but is vi infinitely faster than vscode for manipulating a codebase? Absolutely. Anything that lends itself to keyboard input, piping, text manipulation and a bunch of other things are so much faster if you're equally proficient in both input modes.
- nimih 1mo agoBy "information dense," I meant in contrast to what is typical in modern GUIs: generous borders and margins between interface elements, large buttons, etc. My experience both using and writing TUIs is that, because of the extreme limitations of your tools w/r/t styling and layout, more of the screen real estate tends to be devoted to displaying data, and on whole I prefer that. YMMV, of course, I'm just sharing my own experience and perspective.
- beej71 1mo agoI think the "fun as hell to write and use" angle is underrepresented in the comments—thanks for bringing it up. It is, of course, completely subjective, but I know there are a fair number of people out there who agree with that statement.